Ninety-Eight years ago on March 25, 1919, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory near Washington Square Park. When it was over, 146 workers, mostly women and girls who lived on Manhattan's Lower East Side, were dead.

The annual ceremony in memory of the fallen and in honor of the union struggles for safer workplaces will be held on Friday March 27, 2009, at 12 Noon at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Streets -- just East of Washington Square Park . The last few years have not seen large attendance as those who remember the fire are mostly gone and those who were told about it by our parents are getting pretty darn gray (where we're not bald.)

The Unite-Here invitation is here , a good online exhibit about the fire is is here .